H.I.M.: Romeo must die

H.I.M.'s Ville Valo delivers `heartagrams' for the holidays

By Newt Briggs

Ayyyyeeeeee! Squish.

That was the sound of the Mercury shrieking girlishly and then soaking its Incredible Hulk Underoos in anticipation of a chat with brooding Scandinavian sex prince Ville Valo. In case you cultural Philistines haven't heard, Valo sings lead for the Finnish "love-metal" band H.I.M. and is, like, the hottest thing since that other hot guy who did all that stuff hotly. What was his name again? Something Boyd or Leto or Timberlake? I don't recall.

Anyway, Valo's infinite zexiness comes from a two-pronged attack of grim romanticism and shirtless virility. As to the former, he's one of those rare men who can sing something like, "To cry is to know that you're alive," and not come off like a complete tool. In fact, there's something almost Shakespearean in the way Valo opines, "Kill me, I cried, and love said, `No.'" Was it not Shakespeare's own Juliet who said, "I have more care to stay than will to go: / Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so"?

"I'm genetically disordered by being Scandinavian," Valo says. "Our literature and art and music have always been really sorrowful and brooding--even dark. So the gloomy vibe in our music didn't come so much from bands like Sisters of Mercy and all that '80s goth stuff. It came more from the fact that we're generally miserable bastards."

But unlike his more fatalistic countrymen--those grisly metalmongers who set fire to churches and engage in recreational stabbing--Valo doesn't actually advocate death in his songs. Rather, he equates the finality of death with the irrevocability of love--a metaphorical association that finds expression in the so-called "heartagram." Hoping to design a symbol as striking as the runes on Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Valo doodled the first heartagram--a kind of fiendish valentine--on paper eight years ago, and it has since become the band's universal insignia.

"For me, it's like a new version of the yin-yang," says Valo. "The pentagram is not necessarily an evil sign, but in horror movies and the entertainment world it's been interpreted as the sign of the devil. And the heart obviously represents something sweet and godly. Good and bad--it's all about the balance."

Then, of course, there's the matter of Valo's appearance, which is striking--at least to a burgeoning horde of teenage girls. "It's kind of a joke that we all laugh about when we're backstage drinking beer and playing chess," Valo says. Still, he's flattered by the praise and happy to perform for an audience that so passionately embraces his work. "Lovesick teenagers are people, too--silly people, perhaps, but people nonetheless. And at that time, when you're young and you're experiencing your first relationships, I think it's very important to have something good to listen to."

Valo himself weathered the sturm and drang of love with everything from Duran Duran to Cannibal Corpse. Until last year, when he found a girl and moved up to nicer digs, he would crawl back to his dingy apartment and find emotional solace in music and the flith. "That was back in the day when I was away from home 250 days out of the year, and I wouldn't let anyone clean the flat," he says. "Little tiny bugs started to live on the floor, and I was so alone that I started to think of them as friends. It was a good experience."

Valo has cleaned up his act since then, but he still fancies himself a "collector of unusual treasures." "I'm just like my dad. Even though he doesn't have to do it, he always goes through other people's trash to find interesting stuff. He sees the value in good garbage."

Valo's latest hobby is collecting "Do Not Disturb" signs from the hotel rooms that the band frequents on tour. To date, he's amassed about 100, and when he returns to Finland, he plans to make them into an installation on a wall in his house. He admits, however, that he probably won't get to it for a while since H.I.M. recently sold its soul to a new record label. After a lengthy bidding war that involved as many as a dozen labels, the band signed with Sire Records earlier this year and will release a new album in 2005.

"My plan at the moment is to try to marry the sound of Angelo Badalamenti, who did the Twin Peaks soundtrack, with AC/DC's Back in Black," Valo says. "I want it to be a really full-blown rock 'n' roll album that has all of those spooky atmospherics underneath. Let's hope for the best."